No More Learning

HILMAR TONNESEN (_coming in with a cigar in his
mouth_): I have only looked in in passing. Good-morning,
ladies! Well, you know Bernick has called a cabinet
council about this railway nonsense again. When it is a
question of money, then everything here ends in paltry
material calculations.

MRS. BERNICK: But at any rate things are better than
formerly, when everything ended in dissipation.

MRS. RUMMEL: Only think of fifteen years ago.
What a life, with the dancing club and music club! I
well remember the noisy gaiety among families.

MRS. LYNGE: There was a company of strolling players,
who, I was told, played many pranks. What was
the truth of the matter?

Mrs. Rummel, when Dina is out of the room, explains to the ladies
that the girl is the daughter of a strolling player who years before
had come to perform for a season in the town.
Dorf, the actor, had
deserted both wife and child, and the wife had to take to work to
which she was unaccustomed, was seized with a pulmonary malady, and
died. Then Dina had been adopted by the Bernicks.

Mrs. Rummel goes on to explain that at that season also Johan, Mrs.
Bernick's brother, had run away to America. After his departure it
was discovered that he had been playing tricks with the cash-box of
the firm, of which his widowed mother had become the head. Karsten,
now Consul, Bernick had just come home from Paris. He became engaged
to Betty Tonnesen, now his wife, but when he entered her aunt's room,
with the girl on his arm, to announce his betrothal, Lona Hessel rose
from her chair and violently boxed his ear. Then she packed her box,
and went off to America. Little had been heard of Lona, except that
she had in America sung in taverns, and had given lectures, and had
written a most sensational book.


ACT II

SCENE. --_The same garden-room. _ MRS. BERNICK. AUNE _enters and greets_
CONSUL BERNICK.

BERNICK: I am not at all pleased, Aune, with the way
things are going on in the yard.